Jayson Werth crosses the plate after his homer gave the Phils a 3–0 lead. (John Heller/AP)

As I’ve been hon­ing my pho­to­graphic skills, I’ve started to notice the great pho­tog­ra­phy that sur­rounds us more and more. While perus­ing the Phillies web­site today, I noticed this crop of Jayson Werth. I love grain in pho­tos. While film grain is my true love, dig­i­tal grain has found a place in my heart recently. A clean chip and a nice lens will let you make some really nice crops, and this one is no excep­tion. Read on…

The new site is up and run­ning! This is the third iter­a­tion of this site ever since I bought the domain last sum­mer. Poritsky 3.0! Of the three sites that I’ve made in the past, this one stands out in many ways and I really con­sider it my first “pro­fes­sional” web­page. I relied on a few sim­ple crutches to get my page out the door. Don’t get me wrong, my old designs were won­der­ful for what they were, and they were extremely dif­fi­cult for me to build. This time around how­ever, I set some sim­ple rules for myself, cre­at­ing both obsta­cles and guide­lines within which I could cre­ate a site that made me as proud as I am right now. I’d like to share my think­ing with you now, if you’ve got the time to lis­ten. Read on…

As most of you already know, on Novemeber 5th, 2007 the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike after being unable to come to a con­tract agree­ment with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Today, we are enter­ing the third month of the strike. The con­se­quences of the strike have already been notice­able to the pub­lic. As you know, late-night telelvi­sion has been off the air until this week, and most scripted pro­grams ran out of episodes lead­ing up to the hol­i­days. But while you may be able to live with­out a few choice pro­grams as we enter the new year, I think it’s impor­tant that you real­ize that there is a much more impor­tant loss in this strike.Today, my office, a post pro­duc­tion house based in Manhattan, laid off at least 20 employ­ees. This was round 2 of strike lay­offs, the first being 16 employ­ees a month ago. Thankfully, I dodged a bul­let and remain employed. By no means is this the worst casu­alty of the strike so far, nor is it even close to the kind of down­siz­ing that has plagued many other indus­tries, but of course, I can only speak for what is hap­pen­ing around me.

Since the strike began I have sided with the writ­ers. I con­tinue to stand with them as I truly believe that what they are fight­ing for is good for this busi­ness. Over the past few decades the enter­tain­ment indus­try has spun out of con­trol for a num­ber of rea­sons that are not the focus of this par­tic­u­lar post­ing. Suffice it to say that for some time con­tracts have been stretched and bent, and now they have finally reached a break­ing point. The prob­lems are not exclu­sive to the writ­ers, it just so hap­pens that their con­tract was up before the other unions.

In any event, I am not a guild or union member.

In fact, no union cov­ers what I do. So at the end of the day, employed or not, I will not see a ben­e­fit from this strike (unless of course I start sell­ing screen­plays, in which case my tune may change).

Around the coun­try, count­less num­bers of my col­leagues have been laid off since the strike began. We’re talk­ing thou­sands of peo­ple. It’s a hard time right now, and a very emo­tional one at that. While the writ­ers may be fight­ing the good fight the rest of us go to work each day and won­der if we’ll have any­thing to do, or worse, if we’ll be asked to come to work the next day. As long as this con­tin­ues, there is no ques­tion that more peo­ple will be fired. You can only hold onto peo­ple for so long before the com­pany as a whole begins to suf­fer. So do I want the writ­ers to stick it out until they get what they need? Of course. Then again, when the axe bears down on me, I won­der how I will feel.

When I came into work at mid­night tonight, the mood was that of jovial gloom. 20 of our cowork­ers, our friends, had been asked to leave effec­tive imme­di­ately (there was no notice since we are employed at-will). The head of the com­pany started pulling peo­ple into his office in the late after­noon and didn’t leave until close to 10:30pm, dur­ing which time, I’m told, peo­ple shifted around in fear that they might be next. But once the dust set­tled, those who were still around when I got in couldn’t help but share in relief that we remain employed in an indus­try that is caught in a dark time. For now, we can rest easy. But it only takes one look in our quiet machine room (usu­ally teem­ing with peo­ple around the clock, all fight­ing to get into a deck so they can fin­ish a par­tic­u­lar job in time) to know that unless the work starts pour­ing in again that we will have to weather at least one more shit-storm.

Here’s to hop­ing 2008 rocks and rolls. No mat­ter what hap­pens, we can make it a great one.

–Jon

P.S. I was going to post a review of Atonement, but believe it or not, writ­ing about the strike was less depress­ing. Good thing awards sea­son will be can­celed to avoid this movie get­ting any­thing. What a snooze-fest!